A letter from a reader

At 62, every winter coat I owned made me look like a parcel

I have never written to a shop before, and I did not expect my first letter to be about having a waist again.

Here is what happens to a lot of us in October. The proper coats come out, and they are all the same shape. Padded, quilted, straight up and down, zipped to the chin. Warm enough, I suppose, but from October to March I disappeared into mine. Last Christmas my granddaughter showed me a photograph of us all outside the restaurant, and I honestly had to look twice to find myself. I was the shape of something you would post.

I had not lost my figure. I had just been hiding it under a sleeping bag for five months of the year.

So I told myself that was what winter was for, and that nobody looks at a coat anyway.

Then I saw it on a friend at the theatre

We went to a matinee, and Hazel stood up at the interval in a red coat that went in at the waist and out again over the hips, with two neat rows of buttons down the front. She is no slimmer than I am. She just looked like a woman instead of a parcel. She told me it was the Denize, from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered mine that evening.

What happened at Hazel's birthday lunch

I wore it to her birthday lunch at the hotel a fortnight later, and three different women asked me about it before we had sat down. My friend Sue told me I looked like I had made an effort, which I have decided to take as a compliment. When the photographs came round afterwards I found myself straight away. Red coat, middle of the back row, with a waist.

It is a small thing, to be able to find yourself in a photograph. I had not realised how much I had missed it.

Three things I have learned since

One. It is the cut, not the size. It is shaped in at the waist and then it flares out over the hips, so it skims the bits I would rather it skimmed instead of clinging to them. The shape is sewn into the coat. I do not have to do anything except button it up.

Two. The details are what make it look like a proper coat. Two rows of buttons down the front, a little tab at the collar, buckled straps on the cuffs and tabs on the shoulders. You can turn the collar up when the wind gets up. It looks like the kind of coat my mother had for best, and I mean that kindly.

Three. It stops at the right place. It comes down to mid-thigh, so it covers what I want covered, and there are two pockets at the hip for my hands and my bus pass.

About the price

A coat like this, with all those details, I had assumed would be proper coat money.

The Denize is £49.95. It was £100.

There is no catch. They have their autumn sale on and delivery is free. They do it from a UK 8/10 up to a UK 18/20, and they give the bust measurement for every size on the page, which I found more useful than any size label. Check yours before you order.

I did go and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some sites, which if I am honest made me trust it more. One woman had written, "First winter coat in years that has not made me look twice the size." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you came round and we sat out on the porch with a cup of tea, this is what I would tell you.

You have not lost your shape. You have just been buying coats that do not have one. That is not a reason to give up on winter, it is a reason to change the coat.

It does not look like it was made for somebody half my age, and it does not look like I have given up either.

Caroline